Genova is not a bad place for recycling. Despite the shortage of parking spaces, there are recycling bins for paper, glass, plastics and cans kerbside all over the city. Even more than there were in Karlsruhe, though there most of your recyclable stuff was collected from your door. In Milan, you even have to pay per kilo for non-recyclable rubbish, which is a great way to get people to think before they chuck things out.

The impression I've formed after 11 months is that the UK is a filthy pit of thoughtless consumption and waste. It's pretty bad where I live in south London, where we have to walk about 5 minutes to get to a recycling site, and most people would have to go further. But Edinburgh really is incredibly bad. There's one tiny set of bins in the middle of the city where you can recycle plastic, and a few other bins for glass, but that's your lot. People throw out huge amounts of glass, plastic, paper. Urgh. And people in the UK like to think that Italy is a bit backwards.

This Sunday was the big summer holiday, the city was very quiet and I spent most of the day sitting on the beach at Quinto. Then I watched some olympic highlights on the BBC website. The Italians won two gold medals on the first day, in cycling and fencing. Peopla are very pleased. The Gazzetta dello Sport had also had some really good photos from the games. In general, the standard of photography in the Italain media is very high.